Reworking and "oiling out"

Each year my family looks forward to our annual beach week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I have written a lot about how much I love painting down there. A week never feels like enough time, but this year it feels like a lost luxury because the family made the tough decision to cancel our rental due to the risks of traveling during COVID19.

Needless to say I am feeling very nostalgic for the beach, and have spent a lot of time looking the painting, “Radiant Dawn,” which I painted a couple of years ago during another pivotal time of my life. This was the view from the bedroom balcony of our beach rental, and I hung it up in our living room to transport me back there in spirit. It was an emotional time for me but the awesome beauty of this sunrise lifted me up and gave me a deep sense of connection, hope, and gratitude.

But of course the artist in me started to analyze the painting each morning as I “enjoyed” it from our breakfast nook. While I love the sky, I found myself really wanting to rework the lower portion of the piece. I found it altogether too green and too dark, and it did not evoke the feeling of “dunes” to me. I remember WHY I painted it this way, (I didn’t want to make the painting too busy and detract from the sky) but it just wasn’t working for me.

Sometimes when I rework a painting I have to sand the area down or even first scrape down some of the built up paint texture ever so gently with a razor blade. Otherwise the previous brushwork underneath is too distracting. In this case the surface was relatively uniform. It was, however, a bit slick and required some “oiling out” to assist in the adhesion of the new paint layers. To rework a dry painting I may use a bit of my painting medium mixed with Gamsol, or even a light spray of retouch-varnish applied to the area. For this piece, just oiling out with Gamsol seemed to be enough.

“Radiant Dawn,” Oil on linen, 24x30” ©Jennifer E Young

I basically reworked the lower third of this painting, leaving the sky completely alone. (It may look like I did more to the sky, but that’s because I think I did a better job of color correction on my digital image this time around.) Painting everything in a close value range can be a challenge, but an important one to keep the sense of unity I was after from the start. Here is the newly adjusted piece, with changes that my family didn’t even notice 😂. Oh well! I feel happier about it, so I guess that’s what’s important.

P.S. “Oiling out” and reworking are generally not advisable to do over a final varnish unless you can completely remove the varnish layer due to possible problems with cracking that can ensue. I always use retouch varnish though, both for this reason and because personally I don’t find final varnish necessary.

Beach Week Bliss

What happened to June? It was a crazy, exciting month. To our surprise and delight, our 8 year old daughter had landed a bona fide cast role— as “Molly” ( the littlest orphan,) in the chlidren’s theater production of “Annie”. I soon founding myself chauffering her to daily rehearsals and painting orphanage set pieces, Hooverville set pieces, and various props in the production.

We had a blast during the whole experience, but by the time beach week (and July) rolled around (the day after closing the show!) we were all SO ready to return back to our normal, boring life. Not only that, but I was REALLY ready to return to painting—landscapes on canvas, that is.

My first, early morning attempt at it didn’t exactly go as planned, however. Little did I know when I hauled myself and all of my gear over the dunes and down to the shore at 6 a.m. that I was without a rather key part of my painting setup—the piece of my pochade box that attaches to my tripod and essentially holds my painting upright. As dismayed as I was, I determined to forge ahead.

I managed to complete a small 8x10” just-after-sunrise piece of the pier, propping the canvas horizontally the way you would a watercolor, on the edge of my palette. But it was no watercolor. The morning sun cast such a light on my oil painting at this angle that it was really glaring and almost blindingly too much light on the piece, making it hard to view or judge values. In any event, after a few minor adjustments “after the fact,” I think I managed to capture the “feeling of the moment” in spite of the struggle.

“Nags Head Pier, 6 A.M.” Oil on linen, 8x10” ©Jennifer E Young

I actually thought I had left that key piece of equipment at home, but luckily for me (and the next painting,) I found it, tucked in a compartment in the trunk of my car. Whew! 😅This gave me courage to venture a little further down the road, to find a public beach access and a traditional Nags Head cottage, complete with dunes, weathered cedar shingles, and a fishing boat temporarily moored in the distance between the two. I really love the traditional cottages of “Old Nags Head”, and this cottage “Sand Joy” seemed to embody so much of that local character.

“Sand Joy” Oil on linen, 11x14” ©Jennifer E Young

One other morning it was down to Nags Head Fishing Pier. It was a little too far from the house to hike with all of my gear, so I drove down and paid to park. Ironically, I ended up painting the beach and no pier at all. I had fully intended to paint that pier with its waves lapping and glinting under the pilings, but my eye and my heart kept drifting to the beach and the surf and those wonderful clouds that were forming on the skyline. So I wiped down my canvas and started anew. In such moments I just feel it is better to paint what compels you, rather than what you think “should” compel you.

“Nags Head in July,” Oil on linen, 11x14” ©Jennifer E Young

After that I ran out of white paint and was bummed to find the only art store on the island apparently closed for the July 4th weekend. As a result, I was “compelled” by necessity to just relax the next morning or two and enjoy the sandcastles and porpoises, which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly suffering. I took a lot of great photos, though, so I am sure to revisit my time there in the coming months in my studio. Hope you’ll stay tuned for that inevitability!

P. S. I have a couple of upcoming summer shows in the very near future, including one at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens that opens tomorrow night. I have written indepth about them in my latest newsletter, which you can check out here. I hope you can join me at the openings if you are in the area!

From winter to summer, in one post!

It is good to be back to painting again. It has felt like such a long time since I have been able to stand at the easel and wipe all the cares away and just focus on art. Maybe for this reason, this painting came together fairly fluidly. This piece was inspired by a challenge from Gallery Flux, to create works for their upcoming show all about SNOW! So I thought I would experiment with a few different compositions in this theme in hopes that I'd have some good candidates to offer up for the show, and oh what fun it was! I painted from reference photos I took last winter in my neighborhood, which has its share of beautiful stately and Victorian homes.

"Victorian Winter", Oil on linen, 20x24" ©Jennifer E. Young

And now that I have you hankering for some hot chocolate, I carry you back to summer again, with a new online auction. This plein air painting is a little larger than my prior auction listings; it's an 8x10" piece on linen-mounted MDF panel, with an opening bid of just $200. I painted this little gazebo on the dunes just in front of the beach house where my family has been staying the last several summers in Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I love the way the light hits the dunes right around dinner time, when the sun gets lower and the shadows get nice and long.

"Dune Shadows" Oil on linen, 8x10". SOLD!

New auction listing, "Shadows of the Pier" original oil, 8x8"

Today's auction listing is for a loose, impressionist painting of North Carolina's Outer Banks. I painted this little 8x8" oil "en plein air" over the summer during our annual vacation down there. It's a special place and it's a trip I look forward to all year long!  This auction will end on Wednesday, November  8th at 8 PM US Eastern time, or 5 PM Pacific. 

"Shadows of the Pier", Oil on linen, 8x8" SOLD!

Avalon Pier

This week I've just returned from our annual trip to the North Carolina Outer Banks. After a hectic start to the summer both my husband and I dearly needed some family vacation time to deflate, so we mostly swam, sunned, slept in, and ate a lot of seafood! Needless to say I didn't get a lot of painting done, but I did sneak out early one morning for some plein air sketching beneath the Avalon Fishing Pier:

"In the Shadows of the Pier" Oil on linen, 8x8" ©Jennifer Young